Right now orbitals are free and can easily destroy everything but high level armor tanks. This is due to the combination of their high damage, huge radius, long duration, and short warning.

Something needs to give, and I think a longer delay between use and landing would help. Because right now it's pointless to use anything above a sica, and that's counter-intuitive with the SP investment I have made.

Personally I think it should be:

Call-in

5 sec

Warning

5 sec

Hits

That way they would take a lot more skill or teamwork to be used effectively, instead of free kills.

Edit: it's in general because I want to get some preliminary opinions before posting a full suggestion in the feedback subforum.

How does the ability for everyone to use them act as a counter to one being called in on you?

Tanks are priced to require surviving at least 3 matches to break even. How is a killstreak that you will encounter at least 4 times over those three matches which has a 90% kill rate (I've never failed to kill with them, but apparently you can get lucky) balanced with that cost? The issue is not that OBs are strong. The issue is the cheap kill that smacks of CoD. But even Call of Duty does it better, since you can use perks, equipment, and/or cover to counter, hide, or avoid the killstreaks. Not so in DUST.

The OB consideration is just the thing you can do nothing about. You still have to deal with AV grenades, forges, installations, swarms, collision damage, flux grenades and other vehicles. Keeping a tank alive through 3 skirmishes in a row is a challenge of luck due to OBs. We aren't even touching on the skill of V vs AV.

So we should be okay with effectively deleting even more content from the game?

You are trolls of the highest order, there is a difference between being able to afford something and debating if the cost was justified.

Maybe someday the brinkmanship will end and we can actually discuss the mechanic in question instead of petty mudslinging.

You can not have a free "I win" button with zero counters when assets are permalost. It is poor gameplay design. A nerf is not the only way to correct the imbalance of risk vs reward, but to deny it exists is petty, nieve, or both.

It's the same effect, different mechanic and consequences. It still boils down to semi-random destruction of assets in a way no player could prevent.

I'd like to point out where this comes from for those of you that don't understand what Noc is talking about.

Last week, Noc and I were on opposing teams. I think I was in a group of three and we were playing on Manus Peak and Noc is hill sniping with his tank. We tried to swarm him, forge him, you name it, all he did was back up, rebuild his shields and kept tank sniping.
The rest of his group ate through the blue dots on our team and we were having a pretty rough go of it, got cloned.

But in the last 30 seconds of the match, we got an oribtal and dropped it right on his head. He went 15-1, my orbital being his only death.

That's what Noc is actually whining about. The fact that he can't sit on a hill and camp without fear of retribution. This has nothing to do with balance, or other players. It's his own selfish agenda.

Instead of doing what good tankers do e.g.; look at team scores to judge if an orbital is coming, keep moving, or spec to survive the pub match orbital (which I've seen happen), he'd rather nerf the orbital strike.

So there you have, the true motivation of this thread. Which should end any further discussion save the whining and crying that is bound to come from the OP and his supporters.

Good day.

Let's just ignore talking about the veracity of your anecdote and discuss the scenario as YOU claimed.

A tank is on the field

You fail to kill it using AV

You are awarded an OB

???

Tank dies

What, pray tell, is the proper missing step to change the outcome?

You're a nobody who appears to see nothing beyond a tag out of spite and envy. You can't be done with something you never started. You ranted sure, but nowhere beyond "I don't care since it doesn't hurt me" did you present anything approaching an argument.

Pay ISK to destroy ISK. In the correct direction for balance. I would remove the WP requirement then and add a cooldown timer.

It could be abused, which is why I think this is not enough. Instead of WPs, perhaps there should be non-null point objectives that can be captured to allow locking on to the district. Personally, I think the MCC should be providing the close support and there should be NO warbarge strikes.

There needs to be a balanced way to call for support when you need it both with and without EVE support, as well as counterplay either through cover, special structures, or hard counters.

Definitely glad everyone has cooled down for some serious discussion.

I'm just saying the close support could come from the MCC in the form of null cannons firing from the ship. This neatly gives them a range limit but also makes them available for countering pushes against the redline whenever. Orbitals truly need need their call in mechanic reworked from the ground up. There needs to be some sort of limit to avoid spamming everything to the stone age, but they also should be available when needed, not when awarded like a killstreak.

What if, instead of the warbarge dropping an orbital at 2500 WP, it drops a small turret with a targeting module (small turrets like the skirmish 1.0 blasters)? Then you have to operate the turret and people can see where you could call in the strike to, as well as counter it with snipers or hackers. It could have a "heat bar" so it can only coordinate a strike once per minute until destroyed.